Stuff I've been doing. Wearing tactile clothing, velvet leggings & cashmere. The best thing about winter. Painting christmas trees on my nails, inspiration found here. How cute are these? & so easy to do with some strips of sellotape. Awesome. Now I just have to go to work tomorrow & it'll all be chipped to fuck. Oh well. Watching Reggie Watts videos. At first it was mainly just being captivated by his appearance but the accents, the fucking beats and the songs are astounding. Like this guy can sing. & he's funny as hell.

Last couple of weeks have been strange interspersed with lovely. Just weird friend and work stuff then lovely Christmas things. That sounds cryptic but it's more that there's no point bitching about people none of you have heard of all over the internet now is there? I've been thinking about doing sort of "introduction" posts on what I believe on certain subjects & then hopefully from there start writing more about those kind of things & getting a discussion going. In between all the lovely new clothes I have to show you, because I'm rubbish. Like I didn't even post my halloween clothes! I suck. Anyway. Day off love.

Although I have well and truly picked up the handbook and jumped on the bandwagon with the whole nail art thing, I actually quite like doing it on my trimmed, scuffed up nails instead of on fake massively long ones. Cat laughed at me trying to squeeze designs on when I have half the room and paint my own right hand, but screw it, looking down at some crazy ass pattern makes me smile sometimes. Everyone should try it!

Boring ASOS dress that is nice & was in the sale. After naughtily ordering about £100 worth of stuff that I knew I wouldn't want all of, I sent back half and got two dresses for like £30, sweet! This is cotton & meant to be the "easy floral dress" that's been missing from my life, it's a little too short to be easy (thanks tallness, again) but with tights in this now & hot pants when it warms up I think it'll be cool. And I love the sleeves. Even though they cover up my lovely tattoos rather strategically...

Feel like talking in bullet points so:

• Badass fruit nails making me smile.
• Getting this shirt in the Gap sale after I almost paid full whack for it.
• Cooler weather playing with my foray into summer/spring dressing, can I go back to tights?
• Getting obsessed at a wonderful vintage auction. Only winning two things.
• Reading The Tattooed Lady by Amelia Klem Osterud.
• Wanting a tattoo from Ashley Love.
• Listening to Nicki Minaj's new album, not sure what I think yet.
• Planning my future American escapades very vaguely.

How was your week?

Spring happened! It was so frickin hot last week huh. So sorry, I spent it reading in the park/garden/on the balcony & drinking ginger beer. Having just read the Edie Sedgewick biography, the beautiful screwed up lady has been on my mind a lot. So when I popped into uniqlo in London the other week & saw these breton dresses I went a little mental & bought each of the reverse colours. They're so perfect!

Also really getting into this nail art thing. This is my most ambitious & easy one, the monster eyes. I think I found the picture on fuckyeahnailart but I'm not entirely sure. Here's how I did it step by step:

1. Paint basecoat, then all nails white and allow to dry

2. Use eye colour and create roundish blobs in the middle of each nail, scaling to size and leaving enough edge for the viens. I found making the brush really heavy with paint and then just dropping it the best technique. If your not steady you can use a paintbrush.

3. When that's dry repeat with black for the pupils but smaller

4. Using a nail art pen, or cocktail stick, or paint brush, draw veins coming in from the outer of your nails to the center, about two branches off one look the best. Then use another brush/stick and place white dots to the left of every pupil.

5. When it's all dry paint over clear top coat to protect.

A darker green and red would've propably made them a little more realistic but I was impatient and quite like how they also look quite abstract. They actually lasted really well against my de stickering and box fighting at work and having just taken them off to make way for a new design I have to say I'm missing them already! The best thing though is that you don't have to leave every layer over night to dry because your not using any stickers. Very good for my impatience!

Try it! I want photos!

So yeah, no fancy excuse for my hiatus. I was ill for a few days & busy for the others. Even my mum was shocked I didn't do a International Women's Day post, *feminist shame*. Anyway here's some things from the last week. 

Venn diagram Valentine's card that I see on my table everyday. Working on an icons series of embroideries, tattoo inspired, a little like my mum's Jarvis Cocker birthday present. Also realised that a surprising number on my icon list have committed suicide, oh. Reading Edie, a gorgeously 80s copy leant by the very awesome Mark Sperring of off work. Seeing my name in the Guardian (stylists assistant). More nail experimentation, & I ain't even done yet, gonna add another chevron. Still haven't learnt how not to chip them within two seconds of drying though...

Oh yeah & YAY 200 FOLLOWERS! Thanks guys. This, in a lovely symmetrical math geek manner is also my 400th post. How insane is that? 400 word/picture vomits. Well, I hope some of them came off better than that sounds. & a prize giveaway will follow, something embroidered & possibly zine related if that's alright with you guys.

Alright, alright, lets get back to the serious business of outfit(ish) posts & better bloggery. In my defence of yet another gif, jumpers are hard to photograph & make look nice, or I find they are, so yeah. I love the men's bit of H&M, every things always made of nicer stuff & I saw a really rad orange & green raincoat in it the other day that brought to mind Marni for me. This on the other hand reminds me of a purple space dyed jumper from a Stella McCartney or Missoni runway last season... Because the only way I can get through high street shopping is to at least know where the *inspiration* has come from.

PLUS I am totally jumping on that whole nail art bandwagon. A little late, I admit. But having watched Super Scrimpers & found this series surprisingly endearing, I picked myself up some ring enforcements and got my reverse french manicure on. With the very F/W 2012 combination of bright red & pink. Now, whilst I may not be up to this standard yet, I am certainly considering the splatter DIY or even the drip one. Maybe that's a little ambitious, have you tried anything?

Oh gee guys, I'm almost at 200 followers. How insane is that? Three more to go! I'll definitely get setting up a competition thingy to say thank you. What free stuff do you guys want? Jewellery, clothes or food? Or paper goods/art? Ah we'll see what I can rustle up...

L.O.V.E

Last week I was feeling a little like I'd peaked too soon Christmas wise. I'd got all my gifts, finished making them, been to Pairs & sort of had a mini Christmas already. Then I came back to miserable weather & work. Boo. So after getting over my horrible illness (pretty much) yesterday I put my Christmas "glad-rags" on to try & get in the spirit. Awesome green & red nail varnish (Barry M Emerald Green & Rimmel Celebrity Bash (THE best red varnish I've ever found)) & my trusty reindeer necklace.

After taking some family friends Christmas shopping, as a sort of tradition I splurged a little on some shiny sparkly awesome nail stuff. (let to right: 17 glitter top coat & strengthening base coat, Barry M mushroom, red glitter & hologram) One of my few female friends Cat informed me that it was horrific to be painting straight onto my nails, as I've always done. So I pronto got on some base coat hunting. I'm not very good at taking care of stuff like that. The mushroom is because I have no like "nude" nail varnish, anyone have any tips? I just like Barry M. Plus, who doesn't want to have Dorothy nails? New Year's Eve pairing with my shoes I think. I don't know if the Dorothy's have ever been on the blog.... ohh teaser. & I was pretty disappointed with hologram. Does anyone have any tips on how the fuck to apply it? I was thinking a cocktail stick to pick out the sequin things so my nail doesn't become like double the thickness with the clear nail varnish that coats it. It'd like a mirror ball though, which is pretty awesome.

Anyway yes so basically the takeaway is that because I have finished buying stuff for other people I'm now buying stuff for myself, very christmassy! Happy almost Christmas though innit.

Man it's been a while. I've been MIA, or living off grid, depending what way you look at it. Basically I went underground to avoid all the hectic madness of results day last week. I've had friends making phone calls to the effect of "I don't care which shit hole I end up at as long as I get on X course this year". It's so sad. & has just perpetuated all my homicidal feelings around the university process. I hope you guys all did as well as you'd hoped & got in somewhere to do something you actually want to do. I did alright. A B C. Kind of perfectly. So now I have 2 A's 1 B & a C in physics. Which makes me pretty fucking chuffed.

I've also been obsessively embroidering because I want to sell some stuff online & hopefully at a Christmas market which would be fun! Once I've taken the photos I'll show you my efforts. I also keep meaning to put up photos of the new Craft Room, or Work Room. We're not sure what to call it because either way it alludes to images of yesteryear. Anyway, it's my new sanctuary after aimless nights spent at weird parties in the countryside. I have to hide there because evidently I have lost my dressing mojo, wondering around in spotty cut offs, torn up t-shirts scrawled with Arctic Monkeys lyrics of albums ago & multi coloured nails. Weird fact, at work on Saturday these nails got comments from three males who I see regularly but have never before commented on my nails... very odd. Anyway, let's get reacquainted.

I've missed you!